LINNyEAN MEMORIAL ADDRESS 267 



organography Vaillant died. His death occurred on his llfty- 

 third birthday. He also died unlhanked for the greatest of 

 several great things that he had done for botany. All the world 

 botanical still idolized the memory of the great and popular 

 Tournefort ; and it resented that virtual overthrow of his whole 

 system which this remarkable former student of his had accom- 

 plished. Universally, and bitterly they charged him with in- 

 gratitude. And so that inaugural address, in which this far 

 greater man than Tournefort had given to his science the very 

 best that was in him, became an offense to the blind invidious 

 multitude. When they should have praised him, they blamed 

 him ; and he lay down and died. 



But afar in the north, in the land of giants mythical and 

 giants real, there was an ungigantic youth of great mind and of 

 noble soul, who would champion most successfully the cause of 

 Sebastian Vaillant ; and in so doing create a new system of 

 botany that should supersede that of Tournefort. 



It was in the year 1729, when Linnaeus was in his twenty- 

 third year, and a student at Upsala, that he first became ac- 

 quainted with Valliant's great tract ; learning from it that those 

 obscure and long neglected stamens and pistils were sexual 

 organs and the only really important parts of any flower. This 

 being true, it was plain to him, as it had been to Vaillant, that 

 Tournefort's classes of plants established upon the corolla as the 

 essential organ, were unphilosophically and untenably based, 

 and must fall. From that day Linnseus determined to w^ork out 

 a new system of classes and orders of plants, on the basis of 

 stamens and pistils as the most important floral organs. The 

 result was 24 classes of plants established upon characteristics 

 of the stamens, instead of the 22 classes of Tournefort distin- 

 guished by differences in the structure of the corolla. The Lin- 

 na;an classes were very much more easily Jearned than the 

 Tournefortian. His Class I embraced all genera of plants the 

 flowers of which have but a single stamen ; Class H, those 

 which have two stamens, and so on up to Class X, when other 

 considerations, still in part numerical, were seized upon. Any 

 mere beginner in botany, with a plant in flower before him, 

 could determine its class without even opening the book. If the 



